Essay: ARE THE WASPS COMING BACK? HAVE THEY EVER BEEN AWAY?

IT is a low-key intuition, not spiteful or malicious, but pervasive: in
the minds of most Americans the incoming Nixon Administration seems to
represent the comeback of the Wasp: the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
True enough, the new President's Cabinet, with three Roman Catholics,
is statistically no more Waspish than most in recent decades, even
though it stirred comment for including no Negro or Jew. But people
sense about Nixon's appointments, and his style, a tone of reassuring
Wasp respectability and good manners. The forces that elected
Nixonthose who most avidlv supported himare Wasp...